Wenchuan County was established in 1958, when the former Maowen Qiang Autonomous County (Chinese: 茂汶羌族自治县; pinyin: Màowèn Qiāng Zú Zìzhì Xiàn) was split into Mao County and Wenchuan County.[1]

A number of Neolithic sites have been excavated in the Wenchuan area. The site of Jiangweicheng, located at the northern end of the county town of Weizhou in Wenchuan, has been archaeologically confirmed as a Neolithic site in the upper reaches of the Minjiang River, which extends over a long period divided into three phases. It is estimated to be a new cultural type resulting from the introduction of a late Yangshao culture from the upper and middle reaches of the Yellow River into the upper reaches of the Min River. There are similarities between the sarcophagus burial tomb and the Majiayao culture of Gansu and Qinghai.[2] The site of Jiangwei City is in a different spectrum from the painted pottery and jars excavated from sites in the Chengdu Plain, but lace-mouthed yansha jars of the same spectrum have also been excavated.[3]

On 25 August 1933, a massive 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck the town of Fuxi in Mao County, north of Wenchuan, where six people were killed by a rock collapse and more than 480 people were killed in Wenchuan in the subsequent floods after the earthquake[4]

On May 12, 2008, an earthquake with moment magnitude 7.9 hit the Sichuan Province, with epicentre located in the town of Yingxiu, in Wenchuan county. The county was therefore one of the areas most severely affected by the earthquake. In Chinese, the earthquake is named after the county (the Wenchuan earthquake, 汶川地震), which made its name resonate across the nation. In the county, 15,941 people died, 34,583 were injured, and 7,474 were still missing as of June 6, 2008.[5][6] The seismic intensity was the highest, reaching level XI in the China Seismic Intensity Scale.[7] After the earthquake, the central government enforced stricter requirements for seismic design in this area.[8] The earthquake also caused many landslides, some of which remained active for years and generated destructive debris flows during the summer rainstorms, which increased the death toll and slowed reconstruction and recovery of the communities in the county.[9][10]